


Home Wasn't Built in a Day

by marieshens



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, But he's trying, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, blanket winter soldier trauma warning, canon? who's that, he's not there yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieshens/pseuds/marieshens
Summary: Failure isn't an option.Even if the handler is dead. Even if the mission is impossible. Even if the target causes critical malfunctions whenever he's in range.The Soldier knows he needs a new handler. Someone who'll give him direction in a world where nothing makes sense and ghosts from a past he can't remember haunt his every step. Someone who'll show him the beginning of the way back home. Someone who already knows how to lead someone out of the dark.Failure isn't an option. Desertion isn't an option. But if his little spider made her way out alive, maybe he can too.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46





	Home Wasn't Built in a Day

After it all, after the helicarriers go down and the river rushes up to meet him and he fishes the mission out of the Potomac instead of leaving him to drown… after it all, he can’t go back.

Something has cracked deep inside him. The perfect Asset has developed a flaw that leaves his mind buzzing and lurching from flashback to flashback. He is unstable. He is unfocused. He is compromised.

He knows the remedy for this. The remedy is the chair, and the wiping away of all those buzzing, stinging memories to return him to the blank white landscape of the Soldier’s mind. He swings around to march in the direction of the vault automatically, feet proceeding his mind, but the jagged flash of memory hits him and his breath hitches.

_Failure is not an option._ A handler, somewhere, sometime. It doesn’t matter who. But it’s true, isn’t it? The mission is alive. The mission is alive, and that means the Soldier has failed, and failure is not an option. He had taught someone that, once. Taught them that with violence and punishment the way that he had been taught. _Failure is not an option._ Long red hair and sharp little knives. She had failed. Failed to be the perfect little soldier he had raised her to be, failed to go back to her handlers and her trainers, failed to come back for him.  
For him? No. His head was ringing. She wasn’t meant to come back _for_ him. She was meant to come back _to_ him. To the people who had made her what she was instead of switching sides.

His metal arm recalibrated, plates shifting and shuffling uneasily. They called her _Natasha_ now. That was the incorrect designation. He was the Asset, the Soldier, and she was the Natalia, the Widow. _Natasha_ was a nickname for little Russian girls who had homes and families and friends.  
He had called her _Natasha_ once and they had punished him for it.

She had a new handler now. The man with the bow and arrow. She trusted him. The Soldier had watched them work together. She trusted the man with the bow and arrow to have her back the way she had once trusted the Soldier. She had failed her designated mission and assigned herself a new handler because she _never could take orders_ because she was the little girl who had asked _can I assign myself a mission_ and he had said _No,_ but she had anyway.

He hated her.

His head hurt.

The Soldier opened his eyes and saw that he had failed to make his way back to the vault, which was the designated sub-mission. _Malfunction. Failure._ But going back meant punishment, meant potential termination. He hadn’t completed the mission. He could not return until he had completed the mission.

That was an acceptable. He could not return until he had completed the mission because failure was not an option. The sub-mission was a poor one. He needed to regroup. A tactical retreat. Obviously the mission had compromised him in some way, so he needed to gather more intel. Be more careful. Research why the mission had access to command words that made the spiky memories crawl through his skull in order to better eliminate potential weakness. Research, too, how the bow-and-arrow man had stolen his little spider in case that was a potential weakness too. He nodded grimly. The mission was not a failure. It was simply extended.

Thinking of the mission made his mind malfunction again and he did not want to face Natalia at less than full capability. He would tackle the bow-and-arrow man first. He dredged up information from the files stored in his mind. Designation, Hawkeye. Name, Barton. Clint. Hydra had not regarded him as a high priority threat. No special abilities, except whatever he had used to get Natalia to switch sides. That was surely a special ability.

Barton’s apartment complex was ridiculously easy to infiltrate. Child’s play, really. Something he would have assigned the little Widows on their first day. Except he probably would have added an alarm system. Spikes, somewhere. An unexpected trap.

Barton’s place had none of these things. Barton’s place was boring, and that made him suspicious. The Soldier stalked through the shabby apartment, evaluating potential weapons, potential threats, potential escape routes.

A key, fumbling at the lock. The Soldier swivelled around, gun in hand.   
A click and the door swung open. Barton shuffled in, almost hidden behind a stack of groceries, and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Don’t move.” The Soldier’s voice was icy steel. Barton froze. His tousled head poked up above the bags.

“Can I put these down first?” he said.

The Soldier nodded. “Slowly.” The groceries were obscuring a clear shot. Barton set them down on a counter.

“Sit down,” the Soldier snapped, gesturing to the lopsided couch. Barton did as instructed, gingerly avoiding the protruding spring with the air of one long familiar with it. The couch had had three guns and two and a half arrows stashed in it previously, but the Soldier had removed them all. He removed a further three knives and a cellphone from Barton’s person, hidden beneath the coffee-stained purple shirt.   
“Aw, knives,” Barton mumbled as the Soldier tossed them in a corner. The Soldier glared at him. He was very good at glaring. Barton didn’t seem to be fazed by it. But then, he did know Natalia. Natalia had an even more devastating glare than the Soldier. He had taught it to her. He was very proud.

His gun wavered slightly, imperceptibly, and the Soldier glared at it. Still malfunctioning. Perhaps the arm had been damaged.

“You want a seat?” Barton said. “Maybe some coffee? You look tired.”

“The Asset does not get tired,” the Soldier snapped back before he could think better of it. He aimed the gun unerringly at Barton’s forehead. This was an interrogation. He was the one in power here.

Barton slouched back on the couch. “Have you come to kill me?”

“That is not the objective. You are not my primary target.”

Barton arched an eyebrow. “Who is the primary target?”

The target. The _mission._ Golden hair and blue eyes. He had dropped his goddamn _shield._ He hadn’t even tried to fight back, and that wasn’t like him, he would fight anything that _moved_ so what had gone wrong? Had the Soldier made him malfunction too?

The silence had been too long. “An idiot,” the Soldier said finally.

“The primary target is an idiot,” Barton said flatly. “Steve, you mean? He says you were his friend. Bucky Barnes. I had a book about you. Said you and Steve-“

“Stop talking,” the Soldier said. He would not allow this Barton to make him malfunction again.

“Bucky is a stupid name,” he added. “This isn’t about him. Or the mission.” He steadied his arm. “This is about Natalia.”

“Natasha, you mean?”

“ _Natalia,”_ the Solider snarled. “Natasha is an incorrect designation. Natasha is a nickname, a familiar name. You are her handler. You should address her by her correct designation. Handlers are not allowed to use familiar names. It is weakness. It is disrespectful.”

“I’m not Natasha’s handler,” Barton said quietly. “I’m her friend.”

“She doesn’t have friends,” the Soldier bit out. “You forced her to switch sides. You made her fail her mission. How?”

Barton leant forward. “Why? Do _you_ want to fail your mission?”

“Failure is not an option,” the Solider said automatically.

“I helped Natasha walk away,” Barton said, “because she knew it was the right thing to do. I didn’t force her to do anything. I’m not her handler. I just helped.”

“Will you help me?” the Soldier whispered, his voice raw. He started as soon as the words left his mouth and took a step backwards. _Malfunctioning. Malfunctioning._ He had not meant to say those words. He had not meant to think them. Was this Barton’s power?

But it would be easy, wouldn’t it? Easy to give in. At least, he thought muzzily, easy to _pretend_ to give in. Exploit the weakness. Barton trusted Natalia, and that was foolishness, weakness. Exploitable. He could pretend to switch sides and that way he could gather more intel, get closer to the target-  
God, he was so _tired._ He needed orders. He needed a handler, a handler who wouldn’t try to make him try and kill the target who made him malfunction. Not just yet, anyway. Maybe later. He would get to it. Eventually.

“Barnes,” Barton said. He was standing up now. When had he stood up? Why hadn’t the Soldier stopped him? He was holding out his hand, now. “Give me the gun.”

That was an order. An order from a handler. Natalia’s handler. What had he decided? He couldn’t remember. But that was an order. He liked orders. He was good at following orders. Following orders meant no failure. Meant no pain. He was so tired.

He gave Barton the gun.

“Good,” Barton said. “Now, what the hell are we going to do with you?”


End file.
